Doppler cooling of three-level $\Lambda$-systems by coherent pulse trains

TL;DR

This paper investigates Doppler cooling of three-level $ ext{Lambda}$-type atoms using coherent pulse trains, demonstrating efficient cooling without repumping and providing analytical tools for optimizing the process.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for Doppler cooling of $ ext{Lambda}$-atoms with pulse trains, avoiding the need for repumping and offering analytical expressions for the scattering force.

Findings

Doppler cooling achieved without repumping in $ ext{Lambda}$-systems.

Analytical expression for scattering force in quasi-steady-state.

Optimized pulse train parameters enhance cooling efficiency.

Abstract

We explore the possibility of decelerating and Doppler cooling an ensemble of tree-level $\Lambda$-type atoms by a coherent train of short, non-overlapping laser pulses. We show that $\Lambda$-atoms can be Doppler cooled without additional repumping of the population from the intermediate ground state. We derive analytical expression for the scattering force in the quasi-steady-state regime and analyze its dependence on pulse train parameters. Based on this analysis we propose a method of choosing pulse train parameters to optimize the cooling process.